Distance-Based Cycle-Free Persistent Formation: Global Convergence and Experimental Test With a Group of Quadcopters

In this paper, distributed formation control for multi-agent systems is considered. The proposed control laws are designed to globally obtain and keep the desired formation in a two-dimensional space. It is assumed that the local frames of the agents are not aligned with each other and each agent does not know the orientation of others' coordinate frames. Further, the agent measures only relative positions of neighbors with respect to the local reference frame. Therefore, the control of the system is completely decentralized and the global convergence is achieved without the global reference frame. The stability and convergence of the system are analyzed mathematically and the experiment using quadcopters is performed to verify the results of the theoretical analysis. In addition, the ambiguity problem and time-varying velocity case are also handled and discussed.